The Image of the Heart and the Principal of Synergy in the Human Mind.

Abstract

I should advise internists not to read this book unless they subscribe wholeheartedly and uncritically to the faith of psychoanalysts. The theme might fascinate anyone, and especially physicians and internists. Unfortunately, the whole religious dogma and jargon of Freudian psychoanalytical psychiatry demonstrate in standard form basic inability to separate strong and well-presented convictions from established facts. While hypotheses are useful, and theories valuable, facts are essential. In short, despite the elaborate employment of abstruse mathematical formulae and a number of studies which at least give lip service (should I say oral service?) to ordinary physiologic concepts and to clinical investigation, there is no clear separation of word, idea, and thing. No doubt the author's thesis has an element of truth. There may be a representation within us—some kind of physical nidus for sound with the heart as its conceptual center. The idea of the heart as symbolic of the genitals